1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and, more particularly, to a printing apparatus which can selectively print images such as characters, numerals, and graphic patterns on a sheet-like printing medium, e.g., plain paper, and on a tape-like printing medium, e.g., a label tape, so as to be used not only as a printer for a wordprocessor but also as a label printer, and relates to a printing tape cassette suitable for the printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printing apparatuses of various printing types such as the ink jet type, the wire dot type, and the thermal transfer type have been put into practice. Some of these printing apparatuses are connected to wordprocessors to print images on plain papers (such apparatuses will be referred to as general printers for the sake of descriptive convenience), and others are used as label printers for printing images on label tapes.
However, each of the above-described two types of printers can only perform a printing operation on the above described corresponding type of printing medium. For example, the general printer can print images on a plain paper, but cannot print images on a tape-like printing medium such as a label tape (to be referred as a label tape for the sake of descriptive convenience). In contrast to this, the label printer can print images on the label tape, but cannot print images on the sheet-like printing medium such as a plain paper (to be referred as plain paper for the sake of descriptive convenience). For this reason, a user who wants to print images on both a plain paper and a label tape must purchase or prepare both the general printer and the label printer, resulting in an increase in the economical load of the user.
Some conventional label printers are constituted as serial printers. Such a printer uses a printing tape cassette containing both a label tape and a printing tape in the same housing. In this printer, a printed label tape is discharged from the housing in a direction opposite to the moving direction of the tape cassette. If printing is performed in large quantities and a long printed label tape is discharged from the housing, the discharged label tape hang down into an inner space of the printer housing. In this case, when the hanging down printed label tape is taken out from the inner space of the printer housing, the label tape may be smeared or caught by a member in the printer housing to be damaged.
The present invention has been derived from the above situation, and its object is to provide a printing apparatus which can print images not only on a sheet-like printing medium such as a plain paper but also on a tape-like printing medium such as a label tape, and a printing tape cassette which is used in the printing apparatus and can effectively prevent a printed label tape from being smeared or damaged.